The Writing of Chasing the Sun
Our new song, Chasing the Sun, has been a long time in the making. Read about our process for putting the whole thing together over the last two years.
Writing Chasing the Sun: An Interview with the Gothard Sisters
What was the original idea for this song?
W: I wrote the Chasing the Sun tune in the middle of the darkest part of Winter. It's sort of jaunty, light and dark at the same time. Then one day at rehearsal Greta started messing around with a really cool guitar bass line in the right key (E minor), so I just started playing Chasing the Sun over it and we went from there. Greta invented a fiddle groove to tie it all together, and Solana grabbed her low whistle - the perfect touch.
Why did it take you two years to finish?
G: Haha. Well... we were determined to do something different with this tune than just another fiddle tune with an A and B part. It was such an interesting mood - what we like to call a "mona lisa tune" because you can't tell if it's happy or sad, it's right on the edge. It seemed like the tune was asking to be treated more like a vocal song than a fiddle tune as far as song structure.
S: The Chasing the Sun tune and groove were great ideas but the piece as a whole kept getting too minor. We'd try adding a happier, major tune and that didn't work. We couldn't find a bridge that any of us were happy with. We probably tried out eight different versions of the tune and eight different bridges. None of the orders worked.
G: Nothing "clicked." It was very discouraging and it felt like we'd wasted all those hours.
W: Finally we all three just got burnt out on the tune and decided to let it rest. We put it away right before going on tour anyway and then just forgot about it.
How did you come up with the finished version?
G: Well, even though we weren't working on the tune set, we were playing it every night on tour.
W: Right. We were actually playing it every night in Japan as part of the Finale set right after singing 3 Little Birds. It really started to adjust and become comfortable. Audiences seemed to really love it.
S: It turns out that letting it rest was the best thing to do for it - and playing it for other people!
G: When we actually sat down to work on it again after many months of shows and touring and traveling, it all fell into place. We came up with the relatively simple bridge that we have now - and it fixed the whole song! We realized that sometimes the best thing you can do is to let it go a little bit. Don't give up. Someday it will work. And some songs take longer than others!